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Zora Neale Hurston: What White Publishers Won’t Print

Zora Neale Hurston wrote “What White Publishers Won’t Print” for the April 1950 issue of Negro Digest. It is an article on what sort of stories about people of colour (and Jews) are aimed at White Americans by white publishers and Hollywood producers.

Hurston says whites think people of colour have no inner life:

It is assumed that all non-Anglo-Saxons are uncomplicated stereotypes. Everybody knows all about them. They are lay figures mounted in the museum where all may take them in at a glance. They are made of bent wires without insides at all. So how could anybody write a book about the non-existent?

In short, whites think the stereotypes are true to life!!! That seems mad to me but, come to think of it, even Mark Twain thought minstrel shows were true to life. And how often do whites use hip hop videos to prove some point about the True Nature of Black People?

That means the reason middle-class blacks on television are noble but boring and have little in the way of a love life is because that is just how they seem to white screenwriters! It is not some bad habit Hollywood has fallen into or some kind of racist plot: they are trying to be as true to life as possible!

Or take “Shaft” (1971): the hero, “a sex machine to all the chicks” as we are informed in the opening song, has sex with three women but loves none of them – he even pointedly avoids the L-word. I thought it was because he is just a dog. No, Hurston would say, it is because he is black:

[It is] impossible for the majority to conceive of a Negro experiencing a deep and abiding love and not just the passion of sex.

Unfortunately she is right, because it is not just Shaft: think of how few good, serious black-on-black love stories there are in the mainstream. Paramount Pictures, for example, has not made a single one in the past ten years (if ever).

Since the stereotypes are seen as true, blacks and other people of colour might be good enough for comedies and action films but for the most part they are not deep enough to carry a drama as the main character. Even Larry Fishburne’s black Othello was sidelined by Kenneth Branagh’s white Iago in “Othello” (1995).

Hurston says whites like only two kinds of Negroes in their stories:

Quaint Negroes – those who fit the stereotypes.

Exceptional Negroes – those who seem to break the stereotypes, the key word being “seem”: deep down they are still black, so they are always in danger of “reverting to type”.

Most living, breathing black people are nothing like either one. Which causes whites to misunderstand blacks and all that that means for the country.

Hurston thinks that serious stories about people of colour will help whites to see them as fully human. I disagree: stereotypes are driven as much by white self-interest as they are by plain old ignorance.

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Great post; it helps me see how strongly what Hurston wrote remains today. Many current movies came to mind as I read this post.

In short, whites think the stereotypes are true to life!!! That seems mad to me but, come to think of it, even Mark Twain thought minstrel shows were true to life. And how many whites use hip hop videos to prove some point about the True Nature of Black People?

Yes, Twain still gets a lot of credit for being one of American history’s Good White People in terms of race, but his progressive views on black people were limited in exactly this way (Faulkner’s too). Twain didn’t think whites should abuse blacks, but that’s not because he thought blacks were the equals of whites.

Hurston’s focus on the inner-lives of characters is useful for thinking about Twain’s characterization of Huck Finn versus that of the escaped slave, Jim. Yes, Huck does see something of a real man in Jim, but Twain himself clearly didn’t see much of one.

Regarding that last phrase, certainly both things are in play and I’m unsure how to disentangle them.

But the problem with armchair psychologizing is that everything, ultimately, can be shown to be a matter of self-interest – or not.

I think most white “self-interest” in racism, such as it exists, is a very narrow and short-term interest, at least among working class rights. It’s quite easy to see that racism is NOT in their interest is they step beyond those limits.

Interesting that you list Paramount when they and BET are under the same corporate control (National Amusements).

But for the most part, I do agree- nonwhite characters are usually tired stereotypes. And I think black men, in particular, are singled out as villains and life-support systems for male genitals. Black women seem to get a little more depth in the love dept (Foxy Brown of the movie had sincere, sweet little love, if we’re talking blacksploitation movies in the Shaft vein), but they’re usually still portrayed as violent, crazy, hypersexualized, or utterly victimized.

“Hurston thinks that serious stories about people of colour will help whites to see them as fully human. I disagree: stereotypes are driven as much by white self-interest as they are by plain old ignorance.”

One thing Neale did not address, at a very, quick glance of the article, is if Upper Class Blacks were very rarely alluded too. Then what type of representation would they constitute in books etc if they were to be made inclusive in books etc in the 1950s??

And in this respect any new representation of Blacks back then would probably perpetuate new and other sterotypes

I do not know much on this subject but what I have read it appears as if Hurston is hoping that all ‘forms’ of Blacks would be represented in the arts, but not in a mono-dimensional way, but she does not discuss the implication whether it is better to be discussed vs it is better not to be discussed whatsoever??

I think upper-class Blacks are supposed to be “exceptional negroes” and sometimes “ungrateful negroes”. They are the exception to the stereotype, yet expected to “revert back” at any time (hence why so many are accused of “acting White”). And they are ungrateful when they call out racism, because someone who has it so good couldn’t possibly be subject to racism and stereotyping, regardless of SES.

I think upper-class Blacks are supposed to be “exceptional negroes” and sometimes “ungrateful negroes”. They are the exception to the stereotype, yet expected to “revert back” at any time (hence why so many are accused of “acting White”). And they are ungrateful when they call out racism, because someone who has it so good couldn’t possibly be subject to racism and stereotyping, regardless of SES.

“Is it better to have no representation? Or to have representation with ‘stereotypes’, within such a society??”

And this ties again into to Abagond’s conclusion wherein he says:

“Hurston thinks that serious stories about people of colour will help whites to see them as fully human. I disagree: stereotypes are driven as much by white self-interest as they are by plain old ignorance”.

Well I guess “no representation” depends on your perspective. I don’t know if you are talking about the 50s on their own, but there were representations of upper-class Blacks in existence by that time (Nella Larsen’s Passing, for example), which you could argue fueled the stereotype that only light-skinned Blacks could be successful, because of their “proximity” to Whiteness, etc.

As to your question, I don’t know which is better, and I believe the same Catch-22 comes up wrt television and movies and Black actors accepting stereotypical roles.

Natasha,

ITA. “Regular” Black people aren’t thought to be capable of what she has done, and a lot of commentary about her and the Prez show that folks are just waiting for their “true Black sides” to come out.

Do you mean that Whites don’t use Blacks in their dramatic films? Or do you mean that Whites aren’t interested in watching dramatic movies with Black stars?

I ask because there are plenty of Black directors who put Blacks in leading roles in dramas. I know that he’s fashionable to hate right now, but I have to mention Tyler Perry as one such director. Are his films popular amongst Whites? No. Not sure why, but it may have little to do with his race and more to do with the quality of his films.

How many quality films are out there with Black stars? Even by Black directors? It would be nice to make more quality Black films instead of waiting for “the White man” to put us in one of his films.

I think it is important to keep Hurston’s commentary in its proper context. Hurston wrote this piece in 1950. It was two years after the Army had been desegregated and three years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in MLB. The article appeared before Brown vs Board of Ed (a case which was based almost entirely on the supposed psychological damage wrought upon blacks via segregation. Ironically, Hurston criticized the ruling in Brown), Selma, the March on Washington, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, Affirmative Action, “acting white” etc. At the time, whites had significantly less contact with blacks and blacks were less visible. Being that Hurston’s artistic forte was the representation of the interpersonal relationships among blacks in the South, she was rightly concerned about the caricatures produced by whites of blacks for mainstream white consumption. I don’t think the same argument can be convincingly made today. The nation has spent the good part of the last 40 years asking itself “What makes the Negro tick?”. It is not as if, as was true in Hurston’s day, whites view blacks as psychologically inert beings with lives uncomplicated by age old questions of love, loyalty, trust, envy etc. Our cinematic and artistic landscape is quite a bit different than it was in 1950. We may not like what we see, but it is certainly more varied. The black image runs the gamut at this point, although, the most economically successful portrayals are often stereotypical and often written, produced and filmed by blacks for black consumption. The reality is, as was true in Hurston’s day, complicated psychological dramas are not very popular with mainstream white or black audiences.

You wrote:

“think of how few good, serious black-on-black love stories there are in the mainstream. Paramount Pictures, for example, has not made a single one in the past ten years (if ever).

C’mon man! Paramount has put out very few love stories involving blacks OR whites in the last 20 years:

What about “Love Jones”, “Brown Sugar”, “Love and Basketball”, “Soul Food”? Sure, it would be nice if there were more stories like these, but you seem to think the lack of such movies is part of some racist plot to keep blacks down. The song you keep singing sure is old and tired.

Hurston thinks that serious stories about people of colour will help whites to see them as fully human. I disagree: stereotypes are driven as much by white self-interest as they are by plain old ignorance.

It is worth mentioning, once again, that stereotypes don’t pop out of thin air. Stereotypes sustain themselves because they contain significant amounts of truth. Let’s take two stereotypes that we don’t like, but are nonetheless truthful:

1) Most black children are born out of wedlock.
2) Black men commit a disproportionally large amount of violent crime.

Movies centered on these true stereotypes have been a Hollywood staple for some time (“Boyz N the Hood”, “Menace II Society”, “Baby Boy”, “Precious”), but it seems to me that these types of movies are less prevalent now than they were in the past.

It is worth mentioning, once again, that stereotypes don’t pop out of thin air. Stereotypes sustain themselves because they contain significant amounts of truth. Let’s take two stereotypes that we don’t like, but are nonetheless truthful:

1) Most black children are born out of wedlock.
2) Black men commit a disproportionally large amount of violent crime.

_______________________________________________

WOW! and the statistics for these two stereotypes are put into the masses by who? that’s like me saying all serial killers are white. stereotypes are all in the eye of the beholder. Great post by the way Abagond!

@RR
I can’t speak for Abagond but i did not perceive this post as another attempt of Abagond describing american stereotypes.

Instead he has tried to convey how Hurston defined the frustrating lack of depth of those stereotype crippled the romantical depth of PoC’s depiction through litterature and movies , however stereotypical they might have been.

That’s how i understood it, and the reason i think you missed the point, IMHO.

Thanks, coloredgirrl!! Most rapes, serial killings, and sex offenses against children in the US are disproportionately committed by white (male) offenders, but that doesn’t seem to affect their image in film or any media for that matter; nor does it confer any right for nonwhites to malign white men. Yet the characterization of black folks (and hispanics) in Hollywood remains overly stereotyped. [There’s your elaboration, RR.]

I don’t think I missed abagond’s point. I agree that abagond is not describing stereotypes here, but he assumes that the white man currently maintains black stereotypes in order to subvert black progress….today. The white man did not create the stereotype of the black single mother. Most black children are born out of wedlock. This is reality. Abagond has a tendency to blame the bulk of the problems plaguing blacks (including illegitimacy and crime) on white people. In keeping with his “Blame Whitey” theme, he brings out an old Hurston article to show that, yes, times have not changed and we still live in a society that actively denigrates black humanity and proscribes black artistic freedom. This argument does not hold water in 2010.

“Love & Basketball” is an excellent example of the kind of black films I wish there were more of. But this post is not about films written by and for blacks. In the very first paragraph I said:

“It is an article on what sort of stories about people of colour (and Jews) are aimed at White Americans by white publishers and Hollywood producers.”

You said:

“Sure, it would be nice if there were more stories like these, but you seem to think the lack of such movies is part of some racist plot to keep blacks down. The song you keep singing sure is old and tired.”

Again, please read the post. I said flat-out:

“It is not some bad habit Hollywood has fallen into or some kind of racist plot: they are trying to be as true to life as possible!”

Well, it has been a while since I have seen “Othello” too, so I could be wrong, but both me and my sister had the same feeling – that Fishburne was a supporting character to Branagh. And I do not think we were imagining it. Look at this poster for the film:

What drew me to Hurston’s article was not to Blame Whitey but that she noticed the same thing I did – the lack of serious black-on-black love stories – and that she offered a reason why.

I know progress has been made, blah blah blah (she says that too!!!), but it is striking how little things have changed in 60 years. It is extremely sad that I can read people like Zora Neale Hurston or James Baldwin AND THEY STILL MAKE SENSE. They SHOULD sound like they are talking about another world. But they are not, sad to say.

I would not go as far as Hurston and say that whites think people of colour have NO inner life, but it does seem they think people of colour have a MARKEDLY REDUCED inner life.

It is not some bad habit Hollywood has fallen into or some kind of racist plot: they are trying to be as true to life as possible!”

I didn’t misread you. You did write the following:

“whites think the stereotypes are true to life!!! That seems mad to me “

Many of the stereotypes, like single black motherhood, are true to life. Whites are pilloried and blamed for the problem.

“whites think people of colour have no inner life”

This is just an outright lie. Again, whites have been concerned about the inner life of blacks, thus we have explicitly psychosocially based court decisions like Brown vs. Board of Ed.

“That means the reason middle-class blacks on television are noble but boring and have little in the way of a love life is because that is just how they seem to white screenwriters!”

Most of the screenwriters for such shows are black. Do we blacks view ourselves as boring? Maybe. Perhaps we like it. In any event, there is no plot.

“blacks and other people of colour might be good enough for comedies and action films but for the most part they are not deep enough to carry a drama”

This is another anti-white slander. Not deep enough to carry a drama? Tell that to Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman or Lawrence Fishburne. Perhaps people like Lorraine Hansberry and August Wilson never existed?

“I disagree: stereotypes are driven as much by white self-interest as they are by plain old ignorance.”

So, whites, in their vested self-interest and stupidity, maintain the incredibly untrue and racist stereotypes of blacks, which make blacks feel bad and are very burdensome to blacks.

The problem is that you have a very immature view of race. To you, blacks are victims and whites victimizers, despite all evidence to the contrary. Thus we have endless posts on white racism:

Are white women more racist than white men
White woman tears
How to argue like a white racist.
How white America got rich
etc.

Are blacks ever responsible for some of the bad things that happen to us? Are we all just the hapless stooges of the evil white man and his tempting seductress, the white woman?

I brought up black single motherhood because it is a stereotype that is frequently depicted in films touching on black life. The point was to show that stereotypes are not necessarily the product of racist imagination.

If this post were really about the lack of romance in film, abagond could have just stated that. He didn’t. He is under the impression that white movie producers views blacks as less dramatically compelling than whites. This might have been true in 1950, but abagond makes a VERY weak case for that today.

Of course, one could make the racialist argument that people are more interested seeing members of their tribe depicted in film than those of others. I can buy that. But this tendency is driven by audiences, not movie producers. Producers just follow the very human trait of preferring one’s own group to others. They just follow the money. This is NOT the case abagond is making.

Striking to you, because you have an immature racial view in which whites are all powerful and blacks are childlike victims. You obviously think very little of the progress that has been made and think that whites should try harder to understand the poor little Negro so that he can make better movies about said Negro. That’s bunk!

I wrote this elsewhere and I’ll repeat: the only way to make whites understand is to have BLACK screenwriters, directors and writers writing for the WHITE (“mainstream”) audience.

I understand many (most?) of the black writers don’t have any patience/wish/motive to do this and educate white people, and it’s not that I don’t get why. Still, I do believe it’s the only way. While blacks may not understand whites as much as whites understand themselves, blacks do understand whites much better than whites understand blacks. That’s why I believe black writers/directors are needed in order for whites to finally understand a few things.

I’m a writer (well, sort of :P) who have a lot of black (and other non-white) characters in her stories/novels- so many, in fact, that “certain people” said it was a bit “too much” and “unnatural” (not their exact words, but you get the idea… Especially when it comes to many interracial couples, or black couples).

As someone facing the problem of writing about characters who are not of the same race, I must say stereotypes are not much of a problem for me- they are easily avoided. The more problem I have is not to have black people seem like white people painted black, if you know what I mean. Still, as much as I read about black people I don’t find anything extremely different about them- their reactions, way of thinking, etc. seem pretty much the same like most of the white people I know. On the other hand, white “westerners” (Amercians, for example) are a mystery to me. A larger mystery than a black Americans, I might say.

They are all good actors but they do not star alone in serious dramas aimed at a mainstream audience. The only black actor I can think of who fits that bill is Will Smith, though Denzel comes close. Sidney Poitier in the 1960s was like that too. That is progress, certainly, compared to 1950 but hardly the makings of a post-racial film industry.

“So, whites, in their vested self-interest and stupidity, maintain the incredibly untrue and racist stereotypes of blacks, which make blacks feel bad and are very burdensome to blacks. “

I doubt they care how blacks feel. What they do care about is how they themselves feel. And they want to feel like they are good people. The only way they can do that in a society as unequal as America is to think there is something profoundly wrong with black people, to think black life does not matter as much as white life. In short, to feel comfortable living in their nice houses they must dehumanize blacks in their minds. If they saw blacks as fully human then American society – or at least the lies it tells itself – would be much different.

“You obviously think very little of the progress that has been made and think that whites should try harder to understand the poor little Negro so that he can make better movies about said Negro.”

Not as an act of pity or some kind of cultural handout but because artists, no matter what their race or tribal loyalties, have a duty to truth, not to pleasing, self-serving lies.

Hurston addressed this point:

“Outside of racial attitudes, there is still another reason why this literature should exist. Literature and other arts are supposed to hold up the mirror to nature. With only the fractional “exceptional” and the “quaint” portrayed, a true picture of Negro life in America cannot be. A great principle of national art has been violated.”

The black single mother stereotype goes back to at least 1965 when the Moynihan Report came out. It was based on fact, right? In 1999 the white illegitimacy rate was equal to the black rate in the Moynihan Report. So, you know, since “stereotypes sustain themselves because they contain significant amounts of truth” where is the stereotype of the white single mother???!!!

I think that many whites do care how blacks feel. Whites, by and large, have stopped using disparaging terms like n*gger when referring to blacks. They even accommodate us in our various name changes (from Colored->Negro->Black->Afro-American->African American->Person of Color, the difference between Colored person and Person of Color is lost on me). An entire industry has sprouted around the accommodations whites have made for blacks. Heck, a black man was elected president in large measure due to white concern over the feelings of blacks. We can argue about the affect and effectiveness of the accommodations, but for you to assert that whites don’t care about black feelings just doesn’t make sense. And the following remarks are just mind-boggling:

“In short, to feel comfortable living in their nice houses they must dehumanize blacks in their minds. If they saw blacks as fully human then American society – or at least the lies it tells itself – would be much different.”

Is it your honest opinion that white Americans view blacks as something other than human? Many whites dislike blacks, but it is the rare white person who believes that blacks are not human. These remarks go back to your callow view of race. You have a tendency to deny the patently obvious and quantifiable issues related to race, yet assert vigorously contentions that can’t be proven or quantified. You once mentioned in a post that you changed your opinion regarding the degree that white people are responsible for the problems of blacks, stating that whites were only responsible for 75% of black problems, not 90%, as you said you had previously believed. I asked you how you obtained the 75% figure, but you never addressed my question. This post is part of the same dodge.

Not as an act of pity or some kind of cultural handout but because artists, no matter what their race or tribal loyalties, have a duty to truth, not to pleasing, self-serving lies.

Yes, but what if the truth is unflattering? What if the truth makes a particular group ashamed? Would you be able to handle ugly truths about blacks?

You are correct in pointing out the steadily increased illegitimacy rate among whites. The white out of wedlock birth rate is approximately equal to what the black rate was in 1960. Charles Murray points this out in “The Bell Curve” (a book you have yet to review). I don’t think this fact undermines my argument regarding stereotypes. The white illegitimacy rate is blamed largely on the white lower classes. You know, those whites who are always depicted as being trailer trash. You are familiar with the white trailer trash stereotype, aren’t you. This stereotype also has a significant degree of truth to it. This stereotype is self-sustaining.

“You are correct in pointing out the steadily increased illegitimacy rate among whites. The white out of wedlock birth rate is approximately equal to what the black rate was in 1960… The white illegitimacy rate is blamed largely on the white lower classes.

If the White illegitimacy rate can be blamed on a lower class subsection of White society, rather than on the mainstream White population at large, then why shouldn’t the Black illegitimacy rate also be blamed on a smaller subsection of the Black population?

Hurston was referring to the spate of social problem films that were all the rage between WWII and 1960’s. The majority of these films were about passing and the characters were played by whites. The other films to come starred St Sidney Poitier, but usually were still framed around the white characters.

Many of the current drams feature a Magic Negro over 25 of these films debuted in the last 15 years. The most egregious one is the Green Mile. That film should have been 10 minutes long. Whites film big black man near dead white childre, they lynch him, end of movie. White moviegoers are extremely narcissistic and love films that let them off the hook for racism. They also love films that star them as the prominent fighter against slavery and civil rights. The sincere white fictions support the idea that blacks are lazy and ask for handouts, while whites are the true saints of America. It is sad that 60 years have passed an Zora is still right. If she saw Oprah’s white friendly version of There Eyes Were Watching God she would be spinning in her grave.

@Patricia Kayden
“I know that he’s fashionable to hate right now, but I have to mention Tyler Perry as one such director.”
Tyler Perry’s film’s are so full of stereotypes, it is clear that you are an example of what Zora was talking about, Do you really think that older black women act like Medea? You are pitiful.

RR
The rate of single white mother’s is 20% (2000 census). So there are more fatherless white children than the entire black population in America. There has been a drop in the black birth rate across the board .

RR
“Charles Murray points this out in “The Bell Curve” (a book you have yet to review).”
No wonder your view of black people is so ignorant and arrogant, you believe in Murray’s scientific racism. Murray poses with statistical trickery and white biased IQ tests that Africans are mentally retarded and African Americans are slightly better off because genetic admixture caused by centuries of rape and sexual coercion by white men. The Republicans still advance the idea that blacks are lazy, immoral and criminal as part of their strategy to lure dixiecrats and other racists from the Democrats for decades and have an idiot like Rand Paul running who doesn’t believe that the civil rights bill is legitimate. Democrats are not much better but a least they are less insulting.

Lastly blacks are NOT VICTIMS we are survivors of the one most brutal institutions known to man. Whites advance this idea of victim hood in order keep up the fantasy that all their privileges come from “rugged individualism” and “hard work” instead of centuries of racial privileges.

Certainly, many of the ills that plague the black community can be attributed to the behavior of lower class blacks. Unfortunately, illegitimacy crosses SES boundaries for blacks. 70% of our children, are born out of wedlock. This includes children born to middle-class black women. So, like crime, the illegitimacy problem is a black problem.

eshowoman,

I have to agree with Patricia Kayden. Tyler Perry’s work may not be your cup of tea, but he does employ lots of black people and MANY black people enjoy his work. The array of black characters span the gamut. If you don’t like Tyler Perry, don’t watch him, but don’t complain about the white man not understanding blacks and not producing portrayals more to your liking.

Despite the drop in crime among blacks, we still commit a disproportionally large amount of it, on a per capita basis. Similarly, we still bear a larger percentage of children out of wedlock per capita, than whites do.

RR
The racist drug laws are responsible for a significant portion of black crime. People who drive while drunk get the same sentence no what they have imbibed.
Possession for one half-gram (0.5g) of crack resulted in a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison, while the law tolerated up to 28 grams (28g) of powder cocaine for the same mandatory minimum.
Now that whites are having their own meth epidemic, they are being jailed at record numbers.

RR
White men since the beginning of slavery to beginning of the civil rights movement have been deadbeat fathers, who produced millions of mulatto children and sold them for profit.
“The array of black characters span the gamut.”
The gamut of what? Crazy black men and women who yell and scream all the time? Tyler Perry crosses over because he gives whites the exact stereotypes they see as real black life. Blacks watch his films because of the pseudo-religiosity and the fact that their isn’t that there isn’t much else that gets past the all white distribution companies.
There are so many wonderful black films that get made, win accolades at film festivals and never get to the theater because of the mistaken idea that black films don’t make money. Last week a film with black and Chinese leads was #1, but white films will continue to reign because most of Hollywood feel that “white is right,” “white is universal” and “white is paramount.”

@ RR, the high percentage figure does not indicate where the percentage spike is coming from. Yes, even at 70% the majority of illegitimate births could still be coming from the bottom quarter of income earners. As the wealthier classes have fewer children and no children, and the welfare classes have several children, the numbers could easily shift to 70/30 percentage wise.

Do you have statistics that indicate income level to illegitimacy correlations?

“Jasmin, I agree. I think Michelle Obama is a perfect example of what some see as “exceptional negro.”

and Jasmin:

“ITA. “Regular” Black people aren’t thought to be capable of what she has done, and a lot of commentary about her and the Prez show that folks are just waiting for their “true Black sides” to come out.”

Michelle Obama received her bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and her Juris Doctor (J.D.) from Harvard Law School.

Considering how few people in the US (of any race..) could get degrees from either institution then yes, this White person does think that is exceptional (as in exception from the norm..) because by definition.. it is.

I doubt they care how blacks feel. What they do care about is how they themselves feel.

I agree. That is, sadly, the point here. Ok, there *might* be an exception or two somewhere, but generally, it’s all about that: whites want to feel good about themselves and about America

I am interested in the portrayal of POC in the mainstream film industry and literature and I’m doing a research on it, so yes, all you’re guys talking about is so obvious that it makes you wonder why it’s so difficult for “some people” to understand the concept. I’m not saying your average white joe does that because he hates black people- he simply believes in stereotypes and he truly believes what he sees on TV and in movies to be true. Blacks ARE “like that”, unless they are magical Negros. End of story.

Your average white person is unable to understand in which ways black people are the same as any other people (unable to see them as fully human), but is also unable to see in which ways blacks might be different than whites or other people. (God knows I’m guilty as charged for this one). So they mix these two things in their heads and believe blacks are either so different that they are not really human, or go at the opposite direction and think they are just white people with dark skin- and are completely surprised when black do or say something that a white person wouldn’t.

It’s all down to the society, but if I may to say, media is pretty guilty for these harmful stereotypes. I’m not saying parents are not important, but movies, TV and novels have an important influence on everybody. They shape people’s opinion, images and stereotypes- which is really harmful.

On the other hand, you have the situation that many whites would love to watch/read stories about black people (or other POC) but they are impossible to be found- UNLESS they are about black stereotypes. How many whites watched “Love and basketball”? And how many of them watched “Precious”? (Artistic merits of the movies aside).

PS- I don’t understand the difference (except historical) between “coloured person” and “person of colour”.- The only think that makes sense to me is that “person of colour” puts PERSON FIRST, colour second and thus make an emphasis on being a human, first and foremost being a person and not the race.

“Hurston thinks that serious stories about people of colour will help whites to see them as fully human. I disagree: stereotypes are driven as much by white self-interest as they are by plain old ignorance.

In a sort of way this last paragraph raises the issue and the role of ‘art’, ‘artist’ in a ‘racist’ society.

To what extent artist(s), can produce other form of art (form), in this instance in the US by seperating him/herself from the society (ie race attitudes/stereotypes), and yet at the same time satisfying a ‘consumer demand’ to the general populace (ie racist attitudes and stereotypes).

Hurston suggests:

“Outside of racial attitudes, there is still another reason why this literature should exist. Literature and other arts are supposed to hold up the mirror to nature. With only the fractional “exceptional” and the “quaint” portrayed, a true picture of Negro life in America cannot be. A great principle of national art has been violated.”

I am not quite sure this is the role of ‘art’ in a racist society.

So I concur that in a racist society the art-form will be driven and perpetuated out of ‘self-interest’.

In the Fanonian world, a racist society would ‘naturally’ produce art that reinforced racism. Since at every level within that particular given society there would be cultural behaviours and norms that would impinge and affect the ‘art’ and the ‘artist’, and even the ‘consumers’ (which is the populace).

It features ten short love stories that take place in New York City. Even though a fourth of the people in the city are black apparently none of them find love.

lol

But it’s comforting to know that, according to the poster, gay, old, Asian and disabled people do.

(not that I believe gay, old, Asian and disabled people don’t deserve love, but it’s painfully obvious they didn’t have any wish to include at least one love story featuring blacks. Not even- as far as I can tell- the most popular one, black man/ white woman interracial one).

” I asked you how you obtained the 75% figure, but you never addressed my question. This post is part of the same dodge. “

The 75% is just a quick way of saying “well over half and yet not nearly all” black problems are rooted in racism, either white or internalized. It was not obtained by careful measurement of anything.

I used to think it was about 40% (meaning “nearly half but certainly not most”), but that was before I visited a Sioux reservation and then started reading about them. The parallels were just too much for me to think that it could be anything other than white racism that was at the root of it.

If the stereotype were overwhelmingly true, then you would be writing your comments from prison and have a half dozen children you don’t support. In fact your comments would be full of misspellings and grammar errors.

I never lived in the same world as you. You always seem to look through your white colored lenses at those niggers over there.

I am not sure if you noticed but if you live in America you hear about how screwed up blacks are all the time – it is pounded into your head over and over again, so much so that it can lead to internalized racism. It is not the ugly truths that are hard to handle, but the lies that you believe.

It’s not about whether these accomplishments are exceptional or not, it’s about the degree of how exceptional they are. There’s often the underlying sentiment that a Black person attending an Ivy League school must be a super special snowflake (one in a million) while the same assumptions aren’t made for White people. So maybe exceptional should be redefined (in my first statement) as exception to the rule on what Black people are capable of–there are no standard expectations for Whites as a group to do poorly.

When I told my boss at my high school job where I was going to college, you would’ve thought I said I walked on the moon based on how astounded she was–same thing happens when people hear my GPA. The cynic in me has to wonder whether they are surprised because my accomplishments are so rare overall (they’re not, IMO) or because I’m a Black woman with said accomplishments. I know people at state schools who’ve said the same thing, so I don’t think I can chalk it up to me going to a prestigious school.

I so agree with this good post. There is a lack of black characters in film that have any depth of character. You just don’t see it. This of course is invisible to white people.

Well no… I wouldn’t say that.. it is sometimes abundantly clear. Almost all of Morgan Freeman’s characters have been asexual supporting characters to White leads. His characters generally are a positive portrayal (Genius scientist in Batman…) but certainly lack emotional depth. South Park has mocked this several times. (even having a black character called “Token” and a scene where Chef is sent out to save the day because of course in SciFi and horror films the Black guy gets it first…)

That said do you think the majority of characters that have been played by Denzel Washington, Will Smith, Laurence Fishburne, Don Cheadle, or Terrence Howard..? As I have agreed on a previous thread.. I do recognize that Black actresses are under utilized in American film.

@tulioI so agree with this good post. There is a lack of black characters in film that have any depth of character. You just don’t see it. This of course is invisible to white people.

I know you never wrote “all white people”, so I don’t know why I have this urge to say that I know many white people who are extremely annoyed by said portrayal of black (or any non-white) characters in films or literature.

It is true that there’s a limit, so to speak, for the NUMBER of black characters in a story- most whites do see any story with significant (whatever that means) number of black characters as a “black movie”, but I know many whites who despise token black characters and want

On the other hand it is also true many whites don’t notice if there’s a whole white cast even if movie setting is such that black characters should be presented (New York love story example).

I must admit I am partly guilty as charged here- maybe that’s because I live in a whole white country so I am used to see only white people around and 100% white crowd is nothing unusual to me. In any case, I am quicker to notice a token black character, a stereotype or a magical Negro than no black characters at all.

Black films have much lower budgets on the assumption that they will not cross over. I have this fantasy that Magic Johnson would start having Midnight Rambles (the segregated showings of race films back in the day) to show all the great films and shorts that distributor think are too black and then exhibit the popular one. Unfortunately black Americans are Americans the money and the individual is first. Risking funds on a project that might uplift folks is a thing of the past.

Here I’ve been thinking I’m a decent human being, when all the time I’m just a Magical White Woman about to revert to her true, racist self. And all these years that I’ve been watching films, moved by characters that touched my heart or brain or loins? Turns out I’ve just been the puppet of racist manipulation.

I was born in a state where the “N” word was a generic term for anything bad, disappointing or hateful. I grew up in a state where white men would boast they were going to strap on their guns and “go hunt wetbacks.” My father told me I shouldn’t be a racist—that it was wrong—and then later let me know that if I ever married a black man he’d disown me.

The first movie I remember moving me to tears was called “Imitation of Life.” I realize now that there are stereotypes in it—of white AND black people—but what brought my eight-year-old heart to the point of bursting was imaging what it must feel like to be either Annie or Sarah Jane in that film (and NOT the angsty women who shared my skin color). I wonder what racist attitude I was fostering at age eight.

When Sidney Poitier’s character in To Sir With Love made me think being a teacher was the highest calling one could aspire to, I guess I was objectifying and using him as a way of making myself feel important. And because we aren’t the same color, that was clearly racist on my part.

I have to admit I first noticed Laurence Fishburne as Cowboy Curtis on Pee Wee’s Playhouse—probably because I’ve got a yen for minstrely depictions of black men—you know, being funny for my white amusement. Or maybe funny men just turn me on (I might have married my first, white husband primarily because he made me laugh). But there wasn’t anything funny—and everything hot—about that sex scene between Othello and Desdemona in Kenneth Branagh’s film version of the play. But maybe I had a Mandigo thing going on that time. It’s hard to say, but since I’m white and all these characters that moved me were played by black people, I must be racist.

And now that I know there’s no longer any point in working for social justice—that racism is the root of all evil and pigmentation is permanent—I can just sit in front of the tube and enjoy myself.

I guess you can tell I’m frustrated, and I’m sorry if I’m offending anyone. But I’m troubled by the way posters here attack each other, as if they are enemies when they’re actually more akin than adverse. And while we pick at each other, truly greedy heartless bastards of all stripes are robbing us, jailing us and destroying our planet. These are good, thought-provoking discussions, but I worry too much energy is expended on them.

I think I love you all. But I’m sure you’ll tear me a new one if I’m wrong.

PS: RR—There ARE a lot of black men in jail, but that statistic isn’t enough to support the bit of truth inherent in a stereotype. There are a lot of black men in jail because a lot more effort goes into arresting black men than white men. If you haven’t, read Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” You make some good points, though, IMHWAO.

BTW: Does any of this make you think of how Hurston herself was accused by other African American writers—Langston Hughes, Richard Wright—of perpetuating stereotypes by depicting Southern Blacks accurately? Hughes actually started out writing in the vernacular, then changed his style—perhaps to join the “uplifting nobility of Black expression” movement associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston’s down-and-dirty characters were viewed as a repudiation of that, though she herself would make a case (more clearly understood today) that it’s better to be honest than sugar-coat things. I’m not willing to take sides on this. Perhaps there was a time that Black expression needed to be high-minded and gussied-up. And thank god Hurston ignored all that.

@TLS
Your first comment was interesting. You write that you were moved to tears, at one point, you remember your father’s promise to disown you, you’re scared by our discussions, and so and so, you share a colourful display of emotions aroused by black people which paradoxically engaged no elaborated thought process except for the most basic ones.

@JGreydon
I’m not scared and I’m not stupid, and I still refuse to take sides between Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. What I am is frustrated at the amount of energy devoted to lesser evils when larger ones loom before us. And despite all the millions of words exchanged in this and other blogs, it’s disheartening to see how little communication takes place. Kind of puts you off your feed, as my racist old granddad used to say.

JGreyden asks: Have you only come here, in order to save us from our misguided rants and point us a direction where we might use our enegy more efficiently.

good question. i came to this and other blogs devoted to race relations because i thought i’d see how asking good questions stimulates discussion that results in understanding.

it was a mistake to use exaggeration and satire in my original post. i was trying to say there’s a limit to the power of stereotypes.

and you’re right; i do have an opinion. i think Hurston was absolutely right–and her own work provides the evidence–that publishing was/is dominated by white cultural values and tastes. until those values and tastes changed, her work was ignored. i find it interesting that she was accused of stereotyping (and by other POC to boot) when she crafted true-to-life characters in her stories. i agree with King’s comment that it’s better to have a variety of black voices and diverse black literature than either the “high” or the “low” alone–hence my comment about not taking sides. i could wish that Langston Hughes and Richard Wright felt that way, too, but what would be the point? they didn’t, and Hurston suffered because of their attitudes–as if she wasn’t already marginalized enough.

I met Hurston’s niece recently at a performance of “Spunk,” a play based on Hurston’s stories/characters. I was surprised to learn from her that her aunt was a segregationist–not that i don’t understand the appeal of a life without white people all around you, but that it isn’t mentioned often when her name comes up. Hurston also apparently referred to WEB DuBois as WEB Dubious because she questioned his goal of “elevating” black culture (she maybe thought there was an attempt to make black culture look white?).

And perhaps ripping each other to shreds in these forums is a necessary part of coming to an understanding. If that’s true, wanting anything else to come of them is foolish.

And perhaps ripping each other to shreds in these forums is a necessary part of coming to an understanding.

It’s not—but this is the internet. Forum’s that deal with serious social issues, and get at the divisions in society; mixed with anonymity and the instant gratification of posting, are always going to be raw. The medium is the message.

The women of Harlem Renaissance who always being criticized by the men Zora, Nella Larsen, Dorothy West, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Gwendolyn Bennett, and Georgia Douglas Johnson were all seen as less important the men.

Drug convictions account for only 35% of black convictions. We commit 3 times as many rapes as white men commit on a per capita basis. Do drugs affect our propensity to commit rape?

Hollywood is in the business of making money. If people are interested in a particular genre, Hollywood obliges. Sophisticated black themed movies don’t get made much because black people, as a group, aren’t all that interested in such movies. It really is that simple. The same is true of Jazz. Black people have plenty of opportunity to hear good Jazz, but, for whatever reason, we prefer Rap and Pop. Whites are much more interested in Jazz than blacks are.

I couldn’t find an online reference for my assertion. There is the following from “The Bell Curve” (page 130, last paragraph, hardcover edition)

“Controlling for IQ reduced the Latino-white difference by 44 percent but the black-white difference by only 20 percent. Nor does it change much when we add the other factors discussed in Chapter 8: socioeconomic background, poverty, coming from a broken home, or (and in every other representative database that we know of) have a much higher proportion of children out of wedlock than either whites or Latinos.”

“The 75% is just a quick way of saying “well over half and yet not nearly all” black problems are rooted in racism, either white or internalized. It was not obtained by careful measurement of anything.”

This is exactly what I’m talking about. You assert that the bulk of the problems blacks face is due to racism, yet you haven’t really thought critically about the remark. Doesn’t such a statement require substantiation? Isn’t careful measurement required here? If you don’t have a measurement, how can you say with any degree of certainty how much racism impedes black progress?

Hathor,

A stereotype could be true but not absolutely true for every member of the stereotyped group. I’ve met some really dumb Jews in my time, as well as very athletic Asians and unrhythmic blacks. Nonetheless, ethnic trends are clearly discernible.

I am of the opinion that incarceration rates are indicative of criminal propensity. There is more than a grain of truth to the black criminal stereotype. More effort goes into arresting street level criminals simply because they are more numerous and pose a greater threat to social order. Unfortunately, blacks compose a large percentage of street level criminals.

Well, then I suppose that we’ll have to make do with the data that we do have available. I also searched, and was unable to find those figures anywhere in the webosphere. The data that you are quoting from “The Bell Curve” (Richard J. Herrnstein) is still dividing the statistics interracially, rather than intraracially, along income lines, or level of education.

Therefore, if we are to judge elevated illegitimacy rates within the White population, by blaming the White lower class, then I see no reason why we should assume that the Black illegitimacy rate should not be blamed on the Black lower class, rather than on the Black population at large.

Also, just as an aside, I would be somewhat cautious in using “The Bell Curve” as a single source for making my point.

Wikipedia:

“It is doubtful whether any book in the entire history of psychology has been so extensively criticized as The Bell Curve.[12] Perhaps the most prominent critic of The Bell Curve was the late Stephen Jay Gould, who in 1996 released a revised and expanded edition of his 1981 controversial book The Mismeasure of Man intended to more directly refute many of The Bell Curve’s claims regarding race and intelligence.”

“…The second wave of reviews, which did not arrive until much later, was composed of expert opinion in the relevant fields. It provided a belated substitute for the peer-review process to which Murray and Herrnstein did not originally submit their work. Melvin Konner, professor of anthropology and associate professor of psychiatry and neurology at Emory University, called Bell Curve a “deliberate assault on efforts to improve the school performance of African-Americans”

The data did reflect intra-racial differences. I can’t show you the accompanying chart, but here is a sketch:

The probability that women bear their children out of wedlock (1990)

For a mother of average age (29) before controlling for IQ

Whites- 12%
Blacks – 62%
Latinos – 23%

For a mother of average age and average IQ (100)

Whites – 10%
Blacks – 51%
Latinos – 17%

The fact that the white figure is 10% percentage after controlling for IQ means that only about 10% of white women with average IQs (which is indicative of middle class status) have babies out of wedlock. The figure for black women though is 51%, indicating that a slight majority of middle class black women have babies out of wedlock.

Please read “The Bell Curve”. Don’t rely on Wikipedia for your opinion. I was hoping that abagond would review the book at some point. But that is not to be, I guess.

RR– I respect your opinion, but this is one area where I believe the kind of facts you’re asking abagond for are available.

I can’t dispute your statistic that black men rape more than other men because I don’t have any information of that on hand. But I can cast doubt on the idea that because there’s a lot of black (and brown) men in prison means they’re more criminal than other men.

The growth of our prison population is directly related to the “War on Drugs,” which is waged primarily in urban areas populated by brown and black people. Less than 1 percent of the growth in prison population is due to homicide, less than 3 percent due to other violent crimes; 61 percent is due to drug arrests. Sources for these figures can be found in the book I mentioned earlier and are the result of credible government studies.

Several of these studies over a period of years repeatedly reveal that illegal drug activity is remarkably consistent among all groups, regardless of race. In fact, the single group most likely to engage in illegal drug activity is white youth. Despite this, the rate of incarceration for black and brown men dwarfs that of white men. In 7 states, the rate of black incarceration is 80-90 percent that of white incarceration–even though blacks and whites use/sell about the same amount of drugs.

“Shaft” was not an all-black production: the writers were white. And even if it were all-black, it should still be taken to task if it helps to push stereotypes – like “Precious” did (which was an all-black production).

So, movies should never have stereotypical characters, even if the stereotypes are true (maybe especially if they are true). That leaves us with depictions of exceptional types, but this type also offends you. What I hear you suggesting is that there should be some sort of litmus test that screen plays should be subjected to. Characters that embody stereotypes or exceptional types should be excluded. Characters should be a little be shameless and a little bit virtuous, a little bit stupid and a little bit smart. Yeah, that’s the ticket. I’m sure people will just flock to those movies. People just love politically correct dramas. Look at the success of “Law and Order” where none of the criminals are black but the victims often are. Where the black (and white) cops are virtuous and the DAs are thorough and smart. How many black people even watched “Law and Order”?

As I said before, Hollywood doesn’t often make psychologically complex dramas because people (both black and white) don’t seem to be as interested in these types of films as they are in lighter fair. This has been true for a very long time and even Hurston makes note of it in her essay. This is analogous to the argument my Jazz musician friends make regarding the lack of support they receive from black people. Black people can hear good Jazz music relatively cheaply if they were so inclined. BLACK PEOPLER ARE NOT SO INCLINDED. THIS IS NOT THE FAULT OF THE WHITE MAN!

If this problem bothers you so, you are free to dive into the water yourself. You could write screen plays reflecting your politics. Spike Lee made a big name for himself doing precisely that. He even had a mainstream hit with a leading black male actor (Denzel Washington) in the movie “Inside Man”. Black AND white people made “Inside Man” a hit. So this nonsense you keep spouting about white people not recognizing the humanity of blacks is just that….nonsense.

not 80-90 percent in the whole country, just in the seven cities i was talking about. the rate in those cities is on the high end of statistics; it’s much lower in other cities, as your overall average would indicate (but I wonder where you got that figure and how recent it is?).

the point Michelle Alexander is trying to make is that if drug use is consistent across race, why isn’t the rate of incarceration consistent across race? she also looks at the recent growth in our prison population, and finds that it is directly related to the drug war, which focuses mostly on people of color. why does it focus mostly on people of color when drug use is about the same regardless of color? i think RR is implying something like this: drug use is more visible in black communities, therefore more of a social evil that requires police action. maybe he’s right. i’ve got my doubts.

Your argument of “Give the people what they want” could also be used to defend minstrel shows. They were very successful in their day too. Since most Americans are racist they will want racist entertainment.

Stereotypes are untrue and dehumanizing. That makes them bad as art and harmful to society. People say, “It’s just a movie, lighten up”. I used to kind of agree with them but seeing how much white people base their ideas about blacks on film and television it is, sadly, a serious issue.

You said:

“If this problem bothers you so, you are free to dive into the water yourself. You could write screen plays reflecting your politics.”

That misses the point of what Hurston, a writer herself, is saying: it is not writers who are at fault for the stereotyped fare we get but the publishers and producers, the ones who pick the stories that get made into books and movies.

Amos and Andy was popular with both white and black audiences. Jackie Robinson, who fed into stereotypes about black athleticism, was also popular with whites and blacks. His struggle laid the ground work for black progress up through the present day. Stereotypes can be used to advance a cause. Your naive dismissal of them indicates that you really have no idea how stereotypes are formed. Stereotypes are powerful BECAUSE they are largely true. If they didn’t contain large nuggets of truth, then they would be exposed as lies and no one would pay any attention to them. Take, for example, the stereotype of the dumb Pole. We don’t hear much about the intelligence of Poles these days because Poles, generally speaking, don’t seem to be less intelligent than other people. This was a stereotype that was cast off because it was false. The only time I hear about dumb polaks is when I am around Poles who are having fun with each other.

You have a very bad habit of characterizing any language you don’t like as being dehumanizing. If you don’t like a particular statement, say you don’t like it. Don’t presume what another thinks. Most of your arguments drift off into the areas of psychology and sentimentality. These areas can’t be quantified which means they aren’t falsifiable. Sentimentality is no substitute for argumentation.

Stereotypes don’t necessarily result in bad art. “Birth of a Nation” is still regarded as a masterpiece as is “Triumph of the Will”. What about “Porgy and Bess” or “Fiddler on the Roof” or virtually any of Woody Allen’s movies. It isn’t a question of you lightening up when you see a movie. It is a question of you maturing with respect to racial issues. You expect the white man to cater to your tender sensibilities. He is not going to do that, nor should any man. You are under the impression that what the white man thinks of blacks is more important than what blacks actually do. It is as if the negative opinions whites might have of blacks manifest themselves through blacks, instead of the other way around. The opinions of whites pale in comparison to issue like black illegitimacy, black crime and black under-achievement. Whatever opinions whites may have of blacks as expressed through cinema DO NOT AFFECT THE AFFORMENTIONED ISSUES.

As I mentioned before, Hurston wrote from a 1950s perspective. Her concerns seem reasonable for that time. It is ridiculous for you to think that the same issues that circumscribed her world are the same issues that limit black artists today.

You think the stereotypes are true. If you are right, then Hurston and I are wrong. I grant that. But I do not think you are right.

There are 40 million blacks in America. There is no way a dozen or so Hollywood stereotypes can take in a human society of that size. And if it could, then blacks are not fully human since they would lack the richness that such a society would have.

You want the white man to tickle and wash your feet, then you get insulted and think he is dehumanizing you when he doesn’t. Maturity on your part and on the part of black America is required here. White people are not gods and blacks are not misguided children. If you don’t like the characters the white man has supposedly limited us to, CREATE YOUR OWN. It’s just that simple.

I find it odd that you would keep harping on whites mollycoddling blacks in order to uplift them. It’s this ‘mollycoddling’ that put blacks in many of these dysfunctional states to start. With such attention being paid to blacks, surely torture would be preferrable. Blacks don’t control the entertainment industry. The fact Hollywood is churning out garbage, and people are buying it should scare you. The fact that they don’t make films which are intelligent and contain well-rounded characters speaks to the intelligence of the masses. I don’t believe that ‘good ‘ films wouldn’t make money. They just aren’t making many. This should be cause for concern as the bottom line is the buck, devoid of any substance for the most part. I haven’t been to movies in years and I’ll be d@mned it I start now. I refuse to pay for the privilge of being bombarded with sterotypes and insults. Hurston was right, to bad things haven’t progressed since she wrote that article. As for sterotypes, they’ve just changed and evolved.

You are missing the point. It is that simple. The white man is not going to uplift you. Stop expecting him to.

Herneith,

You are preaching to the choir. It has been my position that if black audiences wanted to see movies with fully developed characters we would have them. Contrary to what abagond believes, the white man is not responsible for the lack of enthusiasum blacks have for high brow fare.

If Hurston was alive today, she would tell you and abagond to stop your damn bellyaching about what the white man thinks of you and focus on those things you can do to uplift your race. Bitching to the white man about his lack of understanding concerning the Negro is infantile at this point.

That is rich: you are telling us what Hurston would say today when you keep missing the point of what she said yesterday. And you miss the point of what I am saying too. You are not taking this seriously, so it is a waste of breath to argue with you any further on this thread.

That misses the point of what Hurston, a writer herself, is saying: it is not writers who are at fault for the stereotyped fare we get but the publishers and producers, the ones who pick the stories that get made into books and movies.

I can certainly understand this point during Ms. Hurston’s day but today Blacks in the US number over 40 million, have per capita income rivaling the Swedes, and can (and do..) form successful business. If there is a broad based perception that White publishers are ignoring good quality Black artistic endeavors.. then there are very low cost vehicles for distribution of music, film, and reading material via torrents, downloads, streaming media, etc. Conceivably there would not only be an interest among just Blacks in the US but also globally in addition to people of other colors.

Continue to post on this subject there and I’ll be happy to reply.. I didn’t have much of a response to my previous posts on the subject (I was a little late to post and people had moved on to newer topics..) but in short.. I have know many drug dealers including myself.. (However I stopped completely when I was 21 and only dealt Marijuana but basically similar principals apply..)

The Internet is destroying the business models of the music, news and print industries. Rappers are selling their mansions and so on. When everyone with a MySpace page can become a rapper no one becomes a rapper. No one yet knows how to make money at this stuff on the Internet, so there is no way to make a living at it to be able to do it full time.

The golden age of American music, journalism and even writing may be behind us. Even the Italian Renaissance was paid for with cold, hard cash.

Take black news: in the case of Aiyana Jones, that girl who was killed by the Detroit police, not only can you read the Detroit newspaper accounts anywhere in the world, but you can even read the blogs of her neighbours! Utterly amazing. Yet there is no business model that can support that in the long term. So meanwhile black newspapers are going under.

On the other hand I agree in the sense that it is a huge opportunity for those without much power or money to get heard if they can work out the new business model before the rich old white men do.

In the early 1990s it did look like there was enough of a rising black middle-class to underwrite the likes of Spike Lee and maybe even some serious black television. It seemed like things were moving in the right direction, away from what Hurston is saying. I was hopeful. But that is not how it turned out. Even hip hop was, in effect, destroyed. And, like in some bad dream, BET, which was never as good as it could have been, was sold to whites in 2003 and got its minstrel on.

I had read the article in addition to a considerable amount of Hurston’s other work. The problem, again, is one of perspective. In the article, Hurston felt that whites should have made more of an effort to understand blacks. This was a reasonable argument to make…….in 1950! We have had 50 years of white people trying to understand and accommodate blacks. Abagond thinks this effort is just some mere trifle and that it is the duty of the white man to make greater efforts to accommodate the Negro. He believes this because, according to him, whites are responsible for 70% of the problems facing American Negroes. As I pointed out previously, 2010 is NOT 1950! At this point, whites don’t need to make any additional accommodations for blacks. If we blacks want to see ourselves represented in more sophisticated ways, we are perfectly capable of creating more acceptable images. As Uncle Milton so astutely pointed out, creating, marketing and distributing entertainment products has never been cheaper. We are also perfectly capable of presenting/disseminating such images. We don’t have to beg whites to create acceptable images for us. In Hurston’s time, whites did create full-bodied characterizations of blacks and actively discouraged blacks from producing these images ourselves (Oscar Michaux and Lorenzo Tucker not withstanding). Again, in Hurston’s time, whites mostly didn’t care what blacks thought or felt. It WAS a real problem with respect to national cohesion….then! It is not a significant problem now. Perhaps, we need to review the article itself and ababond’s intro. From the article, which abagond quotes:

It is assumed that all non-Anglo-Saxons are uncomplicated stereotypes. Everybody knows all about them. They are lay figures mounted in the museum where all may take them in at a glance. They are made of bent wires without insides at all. So how could anybody write a book about the non-existent?

Ok. We get it. Whites didn’t understand blacks in 1950. Blacks have inner lives just like white people. Hurston’s concerns were reasonable in 1950. Most whites in 1950 didn’t think much about blacks, much less about the inner lives of blacks. Abagond states:

In short, whites think the stereotypes are true to life!!!

Abagond writes this as if whites have not made 50 years of effort to understand blacks! As if Brown vs Board of Ed. never occurred. As if black psychology isn’t practically a field unto itself. Despite the endless doll tests and self-esteem measures whites have mostly undertaken to better understand the Negro, Abagond is still bitching. The reality is that blacks differ on several standards of measure as compared to whites and some stereotypes are in fact true. This reality notwithstanding, many blacks live, work and play among whites. Whites, just like blacks, make distinctions among individuals DESPITE STEROTYPES. Whites have even made movies about interracial love that have done well at the box office (“The Guardian”, “Save the Last Dance”, “Something New”). We even have whites making movies portraying blacks as complex and even heroic individuals as in Edward Zwick’s “Glory”, in which Denzel Washington won his first Oscar. Despite this, Abagond reaches back 40 YEARS and digs up “Shaft”. Of course, to his mind, only Blaxploitation films or Numinous Negro films are currently produced about blacks, JUST LIKE IN 1950! So, to Abagond’s mind, nothing has really changed. And then there is this:

“Unfortunately she is right, because it is not just Shaft: think of how few good, serious black-on-black love stories there are in the mainstream. Paramount Pictures, for example, has not made a single one in the past ten years (if ever).”

It must be a plot, right, despite the fact that Paramount has only made 9 romantic films over the last 20 years (including “Save the Last Dance”). That is out of 293 films. So, of all the films Paramount has produced over the last 20 years, less than 4% of them have been romance films. Damnit! Is Paramount anti-love? Are they anti-black? They definitely are anti-black love, right? Or maybe audiences are anti-love. This obviously is the fault of the white man. That ol’ debbil is against love!

What is interesting here Thad, is you constantly talk of ‘fascism’, but it is White people (as a manifestation of White Supremacy) that formed this political movement. So much so they used chemical weapons against Africans in the 1930s.

Yet you seem very keen to place it on Blacks like Garvey, and me on this forum, as being the originators

And I forgotto add taht you can consistently label Blacks with facism, even when Whites are the originators of this repressive political system. All comes back to:

“Personally what our discussion is about is your reluctance as a White person to accept that there is ‘White Supremacy’ and the implication that it ultimately has for you and the way you perceive the world…”

In fact much of what you have say on this blog is related to this ‘cognitive disonance’. No matter how many ‘red herrings’, ‘mental gymnastics’, failing to understand other commentators and putting words into their mouths falsely etc etc etc – that you may utilise during the process of dialoguing

You believe this crapola because in spite of your “afrocentric” rhetoric, you political immagination cannot extend to anything beyond late 19th century political philosophy, which you desperately attempt to turn into “afrocentric thought” by reversing color valences.

In other words, J, philospohically speaking, you are Victorian racist in black face, no more, no less. Your thoughts and fascism’s beliefs come from the same social darwinistic and romantic base and this is why they seem so similar. This is also why Garvey recognized a kindred soul in Mussolini: they’d been drinking at the same philosophical fount.

Garvey had one major thing in his favor, however: he held his beliefs and made his comments BEFORE World War II showed the world how deadly a combination nationalism and racism could be.

We are now 65 years beyond the end of World War II, J, so what’s your excuse for believing this tripe?

If Hurston was alive today, she would tell you and abagond to stop your damn bellyaching about what the white man thinks of you and focus on those things you can do to uplift your race. Bitching to the white man about his lack of understanding concerning the Negro is infantile at this point.

No, if Hurston were alive today, she whould have a WTF moment after talking with you and hearing your viewpoints.
Who is B****** to the white man? I doubt the white people who run the movie business would give a s*** as to what I would have to say in regards to movies and other entertainment genres. That is, unless I came to them with truckloads of money to fund their trashy movies. The bottom line? Money talks and bulls*** walks.

[answering a Eshowoman comment that I, Abagond, deleted because it was about incarceration]

I agree, though he [RR] makes at best, naive interesting points I’m quite surprised he hasn’t been labelled a self hater(if indeed he is black) the way black women were referred to on another thread by a commenter here. Could it have something to do with being of the same color and gender. One wonders!

@HerneithNo, if Hurston were alive today, she whould have a WTF moment after talking with you and hearing your viewpoints.

Probably not, unfortunately, seeing as how his viewpoints are simply rewarmed versions of race theories that were last popular in the 1920s. Hurston would probably recognize them very well indeed.

Her “WTF” moment would come upon seeing a black man in the White House. :D

@MerriMayI agree, though he [RR] makes at best, naive interesting points I’m quite surprised he hasn’t been labelled a self hater(if indeed he is black) the way black women were referred to on another thread by a commenter here.

I think that this is because no one here takes his claim to be black seriously.

I did read again “What white publishers won’t print”, just to make sure, but nowhere have i found an argument proving your assertion that Hurston felt that whites should have made more of an effort to understand blacks.

She points out that the lacunary empathic ability of whites about PoC is due to some AMERICAN MUSEUM of UNNATURAL HISTORY which influence should not be underestimated, as any information purveyed by this museum will be treated as unquestionable truth no matter how warped or nonsensical they might appear.

With a genuine concern for the welfare of the American nation in its entirety, Hurston warns the reader of this Negro Digest’s article, of the importance of the development of a literature with mundane and average non-morbid negro characters.

A literature which would help shaping a nationwide communality of feeling.

And that is something that is nowhere achievable by the white component of the American nation.

Like you pointed out, not once did Hurston expect the negro race to be uplifted by the white Man, but quite ironically, she has devised a method for uplifting the white Man by the negro race.

Can you believe that ? the darn method would have taken two or three hundred years. WTF!

I don’t think this “uplifting” was her primary goal even though she has a nice way to sugarcoat it, this slow process only shows how unmotivated she was for its completion.

On the other hand , i believe she wanted to encourage a dynamic of books about black folks not necessarily written by black folks which once a critical mass is reached, would ultimately lead to a mass counterculture and allow the black Man to meet the western civilization on his own term, shaping his own reality and the way he is portrayed.

I agree with you that the primary motivating factor in determining what movies get made is the estimated box office draw. Money does talk. This should be a given. If abagond had criticized the dearth of more full bodied characterizations in general (of blacks, whites and others), I would have no truck with his commentary. Unfortunately, he drags race into the discussion asserting that bipolar characterizations of blacks by whites is due solely to the lack of respect for the humanity of blacks by whites, as was the case in 1950. This is a ridiculous assertion. Abagond is motivated more by racial angst that rationality here.

You wrote:

No, if Hurston were alive today, she whould have a WTF moment after talking with you and hearing your viewpoints.

I seriously doubt that. As Thaddeus pointed out, she would be more astounded by the election of a Negro to the White House. I am going to attribute the waywardness of your remark to your ignorance of Hurston’s political beliefs. Perhaps you didn’t know that Hurston was a conservative Republican who was a staunch anti-Communist, supported Taft and opposed the ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education. Let’s take a cursory look at two of her political essays:

But I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all but about it. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more of less. No, I do not weep at the world–I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.

I particularly like the line about the “sobbing school of Negrohood” which more or less summarizes the bulk of the commentary on this blog. Then we have her letter to the Orlando Sentinel concerning Brown:

The American Indian has never been spoken of as a minority and chiefly because there is no whine in the Indian. Certainly he fought, and valiantly for his lands, and rightfully so, but it is inconceivable of an Indian to seek forcible association with anyone. His well known pride and self-respect would save him from that. I take the Indian position.

Or what about this from the same letter:

It is most astonishing that this should be tried just when the nation is exerting itself to shake off the evils of Communist penetration. It is to be recalled that Moscow, being made aware of this folk belief, made it the main plank in their campaign to win the American Negro from the 1920’s on. It was the come-on stuff. Join the party and get yourself a white wife or husband. To supply the expected demand, the party had scraped up this-and-that off of park benches and skid rows and held them in stock for us. The highest types of Negroes were held to be just panting to get hold of one of these objects. Seeing how flat that program fell, it is astonishing that it would be so soon revived. Politics does indeed make strange bedfellows.

In any event, the selection of this “What White Publishers Won’t Print”, written in 1950, seemed designed to buttress the pity pot that many of the posters on this forum love to sit on. It is time to get off the pot and stop waiting for white people to “understand” us and create those images many of us would like to see.

I’m assuming you haven’t been posting here very long. I have been characterized as a white supremacist, a Fascist, self-hating black etc. Of course, all I am is a black person who does not conform to the stereotype of what black people are supposed to believe. I guess that, in itself, is supposed to invalidate what I write.

Abagond,

By characterizing my remarks as coming out of “The Sheltered White Man Playbook”, your remark is also an ad hominem attack. I am a big boy. I can defend myself here. Can you rebut anything I have presented? Focus on the substance of what I have written. Can you admit that you were wrong to blame Paramount for not producing more black-on-black love stories? Are you capable of admitting that Hurston’s 1950’s America is radically different than our 2010 America? Does rationality guide any of your commentary or are you committed to always writing from your gut?

I find it ironic that you constantly rail against the use of stereotypes, but yet engage in stereotypes when it suits your purposes. My view is does not conform to the stereotypical black political view. Instead of recognizing the wide range of opinion that exists within the black community regarding race, you, like others resort to stereotypes. In your defense, I freely admit that my opinions are atypical for a black person, but why should you care about that?

nowhere have i found an argument proving your assertion that Hurston felt that whites should have made more of an effort to understand blacks.

I find this remark puzzling. What about this sentence from the essay:

To grasp the penetration of western civilization in a minority, it is necessary to know how the average behaves and lives

Hurston’s point was that whites did not have knowledge of average Negroes, including the inner lives of average Negroes, which did not revolve around white people. This seems to be the main point of the essay. Knowledge of the average member of a group basically means knowledge of the group.

@RR
Hurston does express a genuine concern for the welfare of the American nation. She felt American, she was American.

To grasp the penetration of western civilization in a minority, it is necessary to know how the average behaves and lives.

This statement sounds fairly true, but how do you link it with an effort that whites should have made ?

Indeed, Hurston’s point was that whites did not have knowledge of average Negroes, but she went some extra length to explain why gathering this knowledge was out of their reach.
Because the white mind could not even fathom a reason to gather such knowledge in the first place.

That was the source of her AMAZEMENT and The first statement of her essay.

That’s why she did invent a process to babyfeed the mainstream culture with fleshened stereotypes with the hope that it would create a sparkle of interest, a little nugget of warped knowledge that would be a step toward her utopian communality of feeling.

“I particularly like the line about the “sobbing school of Negrohood” which more or less summarizes the bulk of the commentary on this blog. “

Very few black commenters are like that as far as I can see.

Like many white people you assume you already know what I am going to say and so you do not seriously listen. And then when I am done you proceed to stereotype my position. But in your case the stereotypes you apply are not even close.

“I find it ironic that you constantly rail against the use of stereotypes, but yet engage in stereotypes when it suits your purposes. My view is does not conform to the stereotypical black political view. Instead of recognizing the wide range of opinion that exists within the black community regarding race, you, like others resort to stereotypes. In your defense, I freely admit that my opinions are atypical for a black person, but why should you care about that?”

I understand what you are saying, but I think my point still holds. Hurston believed that whites needed to better understand the Negro. She believed that Negro artists, like her (of course), were best positioned to teach whites about blacks. It is important to remember that her perspective was reflective of her time. I don’t think it is reasonable to assert that whites STILL need to be educated regarding the Negro in 2010. Whites have actively consumed and processed information regarding American blacks for 60 years now. Blacks don’t NEED to be further understood by whites for the country to benefit. Certainly, greater interracial understanding would be nice, especially greater black understanding of whites. More information never hurt. But it is not REQUIRED at this point. This is the problem I have with abagond’s post. He refuses to acknowledge the progress whites have made with respect to their racial views over the last 60 years and steadfastly refuses to face the fact that white racism is not a significant obstacle to black progress. We blacks are, more often than not, our own worst enemy. Abagond doesn’t seem to have come to grips with this reality.

I don’t assume what you are going to say and I don’t assume what is in your heart. Such assumptions would impute to me extra sensory abilities that I simply do not have. What I do have is the ability to analyze what you write. Ok, maybe you aren’t the Headmaster of the sobbing school of Negrohood. I was being somewhat hyperbolic previously. Nevertheless, your posts do have a tendency to blame the white man first. You strike me as a thoughtful individual who is at least willing to broach sensitive topics. You have not yet banned me, so you are tops in my book.

You wrote:

And then when I am done you proceed to stereotype my position. But in your case the stereotypes you apply are not even close.

From my somewhat-limited perspective, Zora Neale Thurston was an intellectual attempting to set the agenda for greater cultural (in film) representation of one particular racial group (hers) in America. That I, a whitey on the other side of the world, even know the names of Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, Forest Whitaker, Cuba Gooding Jr, Morgan Freeman, Wesley Snipes, Will Smith, Eddie Murphy and Lawrence Fishburne, demonstrates that there has been success in her agenda. That the roles that these actors have played might not appeal to everyone is, to my mind, less relevant than the fact that they are successful in a field which Thurston described as being dominated by whites. They are successful and famous for telling stories by movie. It does make me wonder why there are complaints about representation of blacks. These men could be seen as role models.
Look at it from another perspective: How many asian actors do you know? Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee and Lucy Liu? Maybe there are asian intellectuals wondering why they aren’t represented strongly in western movies, why their actors aren’t famous, and concluding that the directors and writers of Western films are all blacks or whites or italians or jews, with an exclusivist agenda.

i AM white, and feel that most whites have no idea about the inner lives of blacks. (nor of any other person of color, but i digress) moreover, i suspect that many don’t care. i COMPLETELY disagree with you on pretty much everything you say. i do believe that a large part of the problem with blacks gaining, socially and financially, is institutionalised racism. i also think that the fact that obama was elected makes a lot of (older, true) white people crazy. literally crazy. these are people who spread the hate about how awful he is, how he is a secret muslim (really? why?) how michelle hates white people. i believe that there has been some progression against racism, but until blacks, latinos, and asians are fully represented in all facets of american life, we are not where we need to be. (and prison does not count)

Hurston goes on to state, in “What White Publishers Won’t Print” that, “The fact that there is no demand for incisive and full-dress stories around Negroes above the servant class is indicative of something of vast importance to this nation. This blank is NOT filled by the fiction built around upper- class Negroes exploiting the race problem.” Don’t be ridiculous, stereotypes are only true if we continue to believe them. You should read “Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston. Stereotypes and racism still exists because it is perpetuated by people with a little bit of knowledge, and a platform to express their limited, yet very biased, views.

very thought-provoking and i’m inclined to agree with you. just one note from my own observations, though, is that most times when black people produce movies (about black people) we tend to propagate a lot of the same stereotypes. how many movies are all about the black career woman who can’t seem to find a man? that’s in almost EVERY black movie that comes out, and im getting tired of that trope. and how come every black woman in a movie has to have a pack of attitudish, “ooh girl” type girlfriends? I’m a black woman and have NEVER been able to relate to that, neither have many of my friends. can we kill that stereotype please, and show some true diversity of character and personality? not all black women are rich or wealthy (classisim at its finest; most of us are working class or poor, yet there are few movies about us. do we not exist?), not all black women are perfect splits between the hood type and the successful type, not all black women have issues finding men, or lament the lack of “good black men”, and i’m tired of these played-out memes. and how come whenever u see a black play, they always have either the men or the women do some type of stupid group dance routine? it’s like modern day minstrel shows, if you ask me, except produced by black people- who really should know better. point is, we can’t rightly criticize white people for stereotyping when when the ball comes into our court we do just as bad a job of unidimentionalizing (i invented it, yah) our own.

I love Zora Hurston; I have bought everything I could find by her for my Kindle. I wish she had been more prolific.

I think there are some good movies about blacks that are not stereotypical – like “The Preacher’s Wife” and “Last Holiday” and “Mississippi Masala” which was more about Indians in America but I thought Denzel Washington was definitely not 2 dimensional. “Along Came the Spider” starred Morgan Freeman and I don’t think that was a stereotypical treatment of a black character… the movie didn’t get good critical reviews but I really enjoyed it.

Of course there are some movies like “The Color Purple” which are brilliant but full of stereotypes, yet the stereotypes deal with historical realities – like the movie Precious, too. It was a very disturbing movie and it definitely stereotypes blacks, but there is also a reality there.

The movie “Fresh” I liked better because while it also shows some black stereotypes it shows how a young kid overcame his situation. I liked the movies “Finding Forster” and “Akeelah and the Bee” for the same reason – they showed black kids dealing with some tough situations but overcoming. I think those types of movies are not just for black people, they are uplifting. Just like I think black people can watch movies showing whites or Asians or other groups overcoming an unjust or unfair or bad situation and find inspiration there.

As far as TV shows, I loved the Cosby Show. I think that just portrayed a nice family that happened to be black. I loved Philicia Rashad. She was smart, sexy, funny and a great Mom. She was someone to look up to. I also liked “Family Matters”. I don’t think the Mom was a Sapphire or Jezebel or Mammy in that show – she was a down-to-earth, practical mother who it was obvious still had a romantic love with her husband. The kids were nice kids. And the character of Urkel was HILARIOUS but it was really cool to see a black nerd. In fact, any nerd. I was a nerdy kid, so I related even though I am not black.

I don’t like President Obama (I’m a Libertarian) politically but I like that he is our first black President. I think it was about time we had a non-white President. But maybe we’ll get to the point where we just see people as people and not as white people or black people?

I think some black women are gorgeous. I love Angela Bassett’s look and Imam’s. I think Imam actually has a perfect face. I think black women should take pride in their unique beauty, including braiding their hair – I have seen some glorious hairdos with lots of long braids with beads, etc., and it’s really beautiful. It can also look very neat and professional, I think, so I don’t see why that could not be an acceptable professional look.